In 2007 the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) commissioned research into how schools engage with change and how the schools sector compares with the health, local government and police sectors with regard to managing change. The research was carried out by the NFER, in collaboration with the Office for Public Management (OPM).

The aim of the research was to inform the TDA’s programme of strategic performance assessment in the key area of supporting modernisation. It included two objectives:

to investigate how schools engaged with change and how this differed between subsets of schools and

to compare the way in which schools manage change with other sectors.

Research methods included a literature review, strategic level interviews, a large scale school survey and qualitative telephone interviews with school and other sector leaders.